Praying to Heaven. Botijuelas reused as roof top in vernacular architectures of Asturias and Galicia (Northwest Iberian)

Summary

This is a poster submission presented at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Decorating the roofs is a human action that has been practiced as a ritual since ancient times. A remarkable local form is found in Asturias and Galicia, which consists of crowning them with ceramics ('Spanish olive jar') from the 18th-19th centuries. These are containers manufactured in Seville during the Modern Age to the Atlantic trade. These pieces in a secondary position are reused and placed on the roofs of vernacular architectures as a prophylactic measure, apparently in constructions located on the coast. The result of a work carried out over some 20 years allows us now to offer the first results of the study of 467 'botijuelas' reused as roof trim in 113 houses. Our objective is to define its distribution pattern based on their inventory and classification, to try to understand why this choice has been made compared to other possible ones, both in ceramics and in stone.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023   •
• 2023 SHA Poster Submissions

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow